text: Fractionation Research Inc. (FRI) is an industry cooperative organization that researches the performance of  industrial-scale mass transfer devices such as trays, packings and other column internals. Its objective is to facilitate the design of more economical distillation, absorption and stripping systems. Before the formation of FRI, such research was performed on a small scale by universities or private companies. The latter controlled their results as proprietary information, generally inaccessible by competitors.